Mankind’s ability to drive species into extinction is tragic and legendary: The Tasmanian wolf and tiger, the dodo bird, the freaking passenger pigeon, plus hundreds, nay thousands, of other species of fauna and flora–remember the moly plant? Nope, no one does because it was so prized by the Romans as both an abortifacient and flavoring, it was harvested to the point that it no longer exists; it may have been related to fennel–and disrupting the earth’s delicate ecosystem.

But what about the pubic louse, Phthirus pubis? Yeah, crabs, aka crotch clingers, a (usually) sexually transmitted critter that is embarrassing and yucky and itchy and colonizes pubic hair. Eeuuuw!

Would we, would the world as whole, be better off without the pubic louse, aka the crab louse? What to do they do aside from prove somebody’s a skank? Well, we may be finding out the answer to that sooner than later, since the pubic louse may soon join the Bengal tiger on the endangered species list. And not because of pesticides, or detergents, but because we are ripping out their environment: Our pubic hair.

Waning infestations of the bloodsuckers have been linked by doctors to pubic depilation, especially a technique popularized in the 1990s by a Manhattan salon run by seven Brazilian sisters…Ten years ago, U.K. doctors noticed a dwindling in cases of pubic lice even as patient numbers and prevalence rates of other sexually transmitted infections increased. Janet Wilson, a consultant in sexual health and HIV, linked the trend with the growing popularity of pubic hair removal she and colleagues observed among patients attending the genitourinary medicine department at the General Infirmary in Leeds, northern England.

And this is causing concern to those who care about bugs:

“Pubic grooming has led to a severe depletion of crab louse populations,” said Ian F. Burgess, a medical entomologist with Insect Research & Development Ltd. in Cambridge, England. “Add to that other aspects of body hair depilation, and you can see an environmental disaster in the making for this species.”

While it’s about time that conservatives like Mary Matalin feel they can safely (as in, don’t feel intimidated about pissing off Rush) take marriage equality out of the sure-fire rallying cry, it’s interesting how easily she shifts blame for the ills of society on all of you heterosexuals out there fornicating and procreating out of wedlock.

On ABC This Week, Mary Matalin, the Republican strategist, had this to say:

People who live in the real world, say, the greater threat to the civil order are the heterosexuals who don’t get married and are making babies. That’s an epidemic in crisis proportions. That is irrefutably more problematic for our culture than homosexuals getting married. I find this important dancing on the head of a pin argument, but in real life, looking down 30 years from now, real people understand the consequences of so many babies being born out of wedlock to the economy and to the morality of the country.

Yeehah! The great state of Texas is certainly anticipating the birth pains of that epidemic moral and financial crisis. By blocking $73 million from from family planning services, Texas made sure Planned Parenthood didn’t get any funding. (Because you know, along with providing general health care, men and women’s sexual health care, STD testing, LGBTQ counseling, cancer screening, prenatal care, and birth control–Planned Parenthood also provides abortions, though the Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas receiving state funding did not provide abortions. But Planned Parent still lost their Texas funding.) The thing is, with a population of 26 million, Texas has a lot straight people. And not all those straight people are married. And while some of those unmarried, straight people may be celibate and/or not of reproductive age, a whole lot of of them will be doing what Mary Matalin says:

Making babies.

Making babies out of wedlock and contributing to the economic and moral downfall of Texas! Millions of straight Texans are going be having sex without birth control, lots more sex without birth control, because they now have lots fewer places to get birth control, because you, oh great state of Texas, cut off your noses to spite your faces and threw out the baby with the bath water.

Except that bathwater splashed back into your conservative laps, and each little droplet is making another baby, and your noses are growing back longer and longer because you, oh legislators and people of Texas, are lying to yourselves when you think that denying access to birth control–be it condoms, pills, IUDS, morning-after pills–is gonna keep people from fucking. People fuck. It’s a fact of life (and let’s not forget that all that fucking without condoms can spread sexually transmitted diseases, ones like syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia that have gotten so bacterially buff that they are harder and harder to cure, and require way more expensive antibiotics. Plus herpes, genital warts/HPV, Hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS; the latter two are illness which can require escalating and expensive levels of care and medication, plus HPV can led to cervical, anal, and penile cancer. Yes, oh great men of Texas, PENIS CANCER. Because you banned Planned Parenthood.)

Here’s another lifetime issue that’s also expensive which comes from fucking: BABIES.

The latest Health and Human Services Commission projections being circulated among Texas lawmakers indicate that during the 2014-15 biennium, poor women will deliver an estimated 23,760 more babies than they would have, as a result of their reduced access to state-subsidized birth control. The additional cost to taxpayers is expected to be as much as $273 million — $103 million to $108 million to the state’s general revenue budget alone — and the bulk of it is the cost of caring for those infants under Medicaid.

Math is hard, but basically, by cutting $73 million to Planned Parenthood, Texas will now have to spend an additional $200 million underwriting the cost of caring for almost 24,000 unplanned babies. And then there’s the cost of medications for sexually transmitted diseases–Texas has the highest rate of uninsured Americans in the United States (and a woefully weak Medicaid system facing a shortfall), so really what will happen then? Will Texas celebrate the arrival The Great Satan in the form of Obamacare? Oh, the bitter irony….

I know some of my colleagues felt like in retrospect they did not fully grasp the implications of what was done last session. I think there is some effort, they’ll be willing to make to restore whatever we can.

Any restoration of funding to family planning would exclude Planned Parenthood, because even though they don’t provide abortions in Texas, they do elsewhere, and gol-dag-nabbit, Texas isn’t gonna help abortionists, even if they ain’t doin’ abortions in their state. Since a lot of politicians–or their constituents–seem to lump birth control, like condoms and pills in with abortion, it’s hard to say if any funding for family planning/birth control can be put back into the budget. Especially because, as Republican Senator Bob Deuel points out, Texas has a certain attitude:

I’ve debated this in Republican clubs with people — people who say it’s not the government’s role to provide family planning. Ultimately, they’re right. But you have to look at what happens if we don’t.

Babies happen. STDs happen. Penis cancer happens. Deuel should know–he’s a family physician. And just one more reminder, Texas: Straight people fuck. A lot. And that makes babies. Babies being born out of wedlock which will carry, per Matalin, consequences to the economy and to the morality of the country.

I recently heard a radio call-in guest say she made her husband wear a condom. Wow. Okay then.

Along time ago, any STD you could catch could be cured with a dose of antibiotics and condoms were just for birth control.

Things changed thirty years ago with the first diagnosed case of HIV/AIDS, but well, since then some people have just gotten sloppy, think condoms suck, and/or have no clue. So for all you clueless lazy-boning latex un-likers, guess what? There’s a nifty new twist to an old school infection (and it’s not herpes, HPV or Hep-C, three more reasons to use a rubber).

Say hello to antibiotic resistant gonorrhea! Yes, a strain of the crotch cootie immune to all antibiotic treatment was recently discovered in Japan, and scientists from the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria have just identified the genetic mutation responsible for the its extreme resistance to all cephalosporin-class antibiotics, the traditional prescriptions, in this new strain of Neisseria gonorrhoeae.

The Swedish Reference Laboratory’s Dr. Magnus Unemo was not surprised by the discovery of H041, as the new N. gonorrhoeae is called. He told the BBC:

Since antibiotics became the standard treatment for gonorrhea in the 1940s, this bacterium has shown a remarkable capacity to develop resistance mechanisms to all drugs introduced to control it.

While it is still too early to assess if this new strain has become widespread, the history of newly emergent resistance in the bacterium suggests that it may spread rapidly unless new drugs and effective treatment programs are developed.

Well, it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what the Bible says. And I’m really concerned about our country because immorality is, well, let’s see, secular humanism rules the airwaves, and it’s stealing the innocence away from this whole generation of children. My daughter is a teenager and I can’t find any show that she can watch…

For the uninitiated, Victoria also explains the term “homophobic”:

That’s a cute little buzzword of the liberal agenda. Basically, the Bible says homosexuality is a sin. But is has also gossip is listed in the same paragraph as equal sin [sic, wtf? sic facepalm,jpg].

So if gossip is a sin, why is she on a gossip show? (BTW, she is referring to Romans 1, though the word is “gossips” as a plural noun, rather than as a verb). Anyway, back to her nutty rant:

They should have a celibacy campaign and tell kids that 50% of teenagers now have this new STD from oral sex, that’s what they should being doing doing instead of making kids gay. I just want to know why the liberals are pro-Muslim and pro-gays. Muslims kill gays. That’s what’s confusing to me. And the only thing I can come up with is the Muslims hate God and the gays hate his word.

Wow, is she dum or whut? Muslims love God, they just call God “Allah” because they speak a different language. Like the French who call God “Dieu” or the Spanish who use “Dios.” It’s not a different God, just a different language, and some minor variations in theological concepts.

Best part of the video: Jackson shouting at the end that she has gay friends.

And in other low-level celebrity moron news, arch-huntress Sarah Palin has long touted the benefits of eating fresh killed, wholesome game meats. And goodness knows, game can be tasty, but maybe Ted Nugent hasn’t been cleaning it correctly, because he seems to be suffering from lead poisoning. Check out his editorial in the Washington Times:

Africa isn’t called the Dark Continent for no reason. Africa has forever been a political nightmare full of overt corruption, tribal warfare, genocide, murderous regimes and brutal dictators…

There is no country in Africa that truly respects freedom or the rule of law. The majority of countries in Africa are in economic ruin because of political corruption and a history ugly with cruel despotism. That’s why starvation and disease are rampant. AIDS is projected to kill as much as half the populations of some countries. Genocide is a way of life. There is little light in Africa…

Africa is an international scab. Bono of the band U2 advocates that if we forgive debt African nations owe, peace and tranquillity [sic] will sprout up mystically. The real problem is murdering, corrupt thugs and punks like Col. Gadhafi. Once we swat one of these African cockroaches or intervene in their civil war, where do we stop?

Uh, somehow I don’t think African nations started out corrupt and despotic. See, there was this thing called colonialism…

Side note: debt forgiveness is one part of helping the nations of Africa and so is HIV/AIDS care. With that in mind, and this being the 30th year of the scourge of HIV/AIDS, we’re featuring The Lazarus Effect here on Movie Night, Monday April 18. Produced by Join (RED), an organization Bono founded to provide HIV/AIDS care in Africa, The Lazarus Effect is also airing on HBO April 15th.